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Obama's comments on race from candidacy to presidency

But the fear went deeper than of mere broken windows and broken heads. The fear was that black people, by gathering in huge numbers and attracting huge attention, would become visible.

Much of white America failed to see black people at all. Black people for the most part were, as Ralph Ellison had termed them, “invisible.” They were servants and laborers. They did not sit at the desk next to white people at work or live on the same block. Most black children did not go to school with white children. White people knew that black people existed, but they did not really see them.

But 1963 was a year in which many black people had suddenly become visible. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had led a series of demonstrations in Birmingham, Ala., in the spring that included nonviolent sit-ins and marches. Bull Connor, the commissioner of public safety for the city of Birmingham, had blasted protesters with fire hoses and unleashed police dogs on them.

Some in the civil rights movement grew fearful and asked King to pause. But he would not. “The eyes of the world are on Birmingham,” he said. “We’re going on in spite of dogs and fire hoses. We’ve gone too far to turn back.”

The protesters would end up winning many of their demands. And on June 12, President John F. Kennedy, who had been dragging his feet on civil rights, made a major speech promising new legislation. “One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs … are not fully free,” Kennedy said. “Now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise.”

That night, Medgar Evers, an NAACP organizer in Jackson, Mississippi, would be shot in the back and killed in the driveway of his home. He was 37. A veteran of World War II, who had fought at Normandy, Evers was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

It was against this backdrop that the March on Washington took place. Kennedy did not want the march, but the black leadership insisted. They decided against massive sit-ins in the streets of Washington and opted for a march, speeches and songs.

White America was afraid, confused, even baffled. Who were these people? And what did they want? Last Sunday, NBC re-aired its “Meet the Press” show of Aug. 25, 1963, three days before the march. The panelists, all white, asked questions of King and Roy Wilkins, the executive secretary of the NAACP.

The tone was set by Lawrence Spivak, the co-creator of “Meet the Press,” who began by saying to Wilkins: “There are a great many people who believe it will be impossible to bring 100,000 militant Negroes into Washington without incident and possibly riots.”

Wilkins calmly replied he did not think there would be any rioting.

Another panelist said many Americans were “afraid of the motives” of the march organizers and feared Communists had infiltrated the movement. (After the march, an FBI memo to J. Edgar Hoover said King was now “the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.”)

Richard Wilson of Cowles Newspaper Publications said to King that some felt he was “pushing too far too fast.”

“I don’t agree,” King said calmly. “The Negro has been extremely patient for our God-given rights. We are at the bottom of the economic ladder. We are the victims of segregation.” The march, King said, would “help not only the Negro cause, but the rest of the nation.”

Wilson asked whether “moderation” wouldn’t be a better path.

“If moderation means moving to justice, then…we must pursue it,” King said. “But if it means capitulation, it would be immoral.”

Spivak asked whether it would not be better for Negroes to be given “time to digest” what they had already achieved rather than push for new laws now.

Wilkins replied: “It is incumbent on the Negro population to keep asking for more. They have been deprived so long. We cannot [reduce] the pressure for the end of evil.”

Many white people, even well-meaning ones, were not used to hearing such terms. They thought the civil rights movement was a fight to sit at the same soda fountains as whites. Now they were being told it was a struggle against evil. And they might be the evil ones.

The great march would take place. It would be peaceful. King would be named Time magazine’s Man of the Year for 1963. In 1964, he would receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1968, he would be assassinated.

America would descend into paroxysms of rage over race and the war in Vietnam, a war King had publicly opposed in 1967. King’s message of nonviolence was challenged, called inadequate and a capitulation. But in the end, King was right, both morally and tactically.

Sunday on ABC, Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, the last surviving speaker from the 1963 march, said of that day and of King: “The future of America as one nation, as one people was at stake. We could’ve gone in a different direction. He helped hold us together.”

Roger Simon is POLITICO’s chief political columnist. His new e-book, “RECKONING: Campaign 2012 and the Fight for the Soul of America,” can be found on Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com and iTunes.